\n<\/p>\n
When it comes to league football in the UK, spending money does not guarantee promotion to the next tier, Phua told CNA.<\/p>\n
\u201cEven if you were to invest the maximum or the highest amounts, it still doesn’t guarantee promotion season to season,” he said. “Definitely the losses just pile up.\u201d<\/p>\n
Phua, the chairman of both Turn Capital and Turn Sports Investment, aims to prioritise long-term financial sustainability over chasing promotions. His firm could easily triple or quadruple its investment to acquire a strong playing roster, Phua said, but that would leave the town saddled with an unsustainable playing budget once outside investors step back.<\/p>\n
\u201cResults do matter, but we would not risk short-term results for long-term gains,\u201d said Phua.<\/p>\n
Phua’s background offers few obvious clues to his interest in lower-league English football. He grew up in Singapore but furthered his studies at New York University’s Stern School of Business and the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business.<\/p>\n
He went on to build his career across tech, media and hospitality \u2013 from dating app Paktor to 17Live, now the largest livestreaming platform in Japan and Taiwan.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat inspired me was always the idea of building things from scratch, built on financial fundamentals and discipline, taking overlooked opportunities and turning them into something bigger,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Two years ago, Turn Capital identified sports as “an interesting sector”, and bankers identified King\u2019s Lynn as a potential asset. The firm developed a matrix considering over 20 data points to evaluate potential investments, though Phua admits the final decision came down to instinct as much as analysis.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou’re going to speak to the people, and then you have to kind of try to feel your way around it, because a lot of times the data doesn’t tell the full story,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Beyond football, Phua saw a heritage town that had been overlooked, sitting within reach of affluent areas like Cambridge and Sandringham, where King Charles visits for holidays.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n